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buckeye state

We all know about my undying love for Jeni’s. Earlier this month, when I made her “Milkiest Chocolate Ice Cream in the World” I couldn’t shut up about how good it was. Well, when I returned to her book to make my favorite “Buckeye State Ice Cream”, I swear I could have died after that first bite. I can confidently say that any recipe you make out of Jeni’s book is guaranteed to be a hit. And this one? If you, like me, have an affinity for all things chocolate and peanut butter – you must make this. You simply must.

This ice cream is pure buckeye bliss. For those of you who aren’t from the Ohio – Ohio is affectionately called “the buckeye state”, because the best thing we can think to be known for is a slightly poisonous, inedible tree nut. For this reason, we created our own super awesome “buckeye”, which looks like the nut, but is made of chocolate and peanut butter and is very edible. In fact, it is probably the sole reason that Ohians everywhere are obsessed with the combination peanut butter and chocolate. We have “buckeyes”, then buckeye bars, buckeye brownies, buckeye ice cream…. you name it and we’ve “buckeyed” it. Hence, Jeni’s “Buckeye State Ice Cream” which is the perfect combination of peanut butter ice cream and chocolate.

I love that Jeni gives us her secret of pouring the melted chocolate into the churning ice cream, which causes the chocolate to break into tiny pieces that evenly disperse throughout the container of ice cream. This ensures that each bite has the perfect amount of chocolate in pieces that are the ideal size to complement the peanut butter’s flavor as the chocolate pieces melt away on your tongue (vs other ice creams that can end up with a giant hard piece of frozen chocolate to gnaw on).

1. Fill a large bowl with ice water, set aside. Mix 2 tablespoons of the milk with the cornstarch in a small bowl and set aside.

2. Whisk the cream cheese, peanut butter, and salt in a medium bowl until smooth. (This part was hard, so I didn’t do a very good job, which didn’t really matter because it’s going to all melt later anyway) You can probably just smoosh and stir it together with a spatula and be fine.

3. Combine remaining milk, cream, sugar, corn syrup, and honey in a large sauce pan and bring to a rolling boil of medium-high heat. Boil for 4 minutes. (Keep a watchful eye on it to make sure it doesn’t boil over the sides of the pan) Remove from heat and gradually whisk in cornstarch slurry.

4. Place pan back on burner and bring the mixture back to a boil and cook, stirring with a spatula until slightly thickened – about 1 minute. Remove pan from heat (again).

5. Gradually whisk the hot milk mixture into the peanut butter mixture until smooth. Keep whisking… Once it’s smooth pour the mixture into a 1-gallon freezer bag and submerge in the ice water. Let sit until it’s chilled, at least 30 minutes.

6. Pour ice cream base into the frozen canister and being spinning.

7. While the ice cream is spinning, melt your chocolate in a double boiler, or in the microwave (on 50% power in 30 second intervals, stirring between each interval). Set aside until cool, but still pourable.

8. When the ice cream is almost done, drizzle the melted chocolate through the opening of the ice cream machine and allow it to solidify and break up in the ice cream for about 2 minutes. At this point, some of the chocolate solidified all together into one piece and tried to make my ice cream overflow over the sides of my mixer, so have a spoon handy in case you have to reach in there and break it up.

9. Pour ice cream into a storage container and freeze for at least 4 hours, until firm.